SaltISlife Posted April 8, 2011 Share Posted April 8, 2011 (scratch)I have a technical question i run my entire tank on one 110v standard power outlet, i have a 6way plug adapter thats on it and a power strip that on that, both are filled with all my components for the tank. including my 250W metal halide electronic ballast thats plugged into the strip on a timer and the mag 950 return pump. along with everything else but those are the two biggest juice suckers, what im wondering is if this is kosher so to speak, am i losing power to the ballast causing the MH to be "less bright"? (scratch) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted April 8, 2011 Share Posted April 8, 2011 No you aren't losing power to it, but you might be in for trouble if you are overloading that receptacle and/or power strip. You need to add up the wattage of all the components plugged in and see where you are at. You'll have to convert it to amps after you get the total, or you could add up the amps if that info is available on the equipment. Do the cords to the powerstrips get warm? Does the breaker ever trip? Try to space the equipment out between 2 or 3 different receptacles to be safe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted April 8, 2011 Share Posted April 8, 2011 The simple answer is no however it honestly is more complicated than this. Resistance from small wires could drag down the amperage however the wires would also get hot and become dangerous. What you really need to do is figure the total amperage and be sure that circuit will handle it. Even better would be to buy a kill-a-watt to test it to get total wattage and use that to figure amps. (Watts/Volts=Amps) Be sure to include anything plugged into any other outlets that are on that same circuit also. Personally I got lucky as I have an outlet on each side of my tank and they are on different circuits. This allows me to power pumps on one and everything else on the other. Note that I specified circuit rather than outlet. One circuit may have several outlets wired to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted April 8, 2011 Share Posted April 8, 2011 BTW, when you figure the total watts used (if your not using a kill-a-watt to measure it) figure in an efficiency of 70 or 80 percent. I.E. If you have a 250 watt light that wattage is what needs to reach the bulb howevery there will be an efficiency loss in the ballast and wiring so it might actually be using 300 or more watts. Chances are your breaker is only 15 amps so it would only handle about 1650 watts (15 amps * 110 volts = 1650 watts). 2 250w lights might take 600 watts. The mag 950 takes around 100 watts. Add a 300 watt heater and that may be taking 350 watts. A couple of power heads might add 50 watts more. Toss in dual VHO lights and that might add another 260 watts. If you add these up you can see we start getting close to the maximum for this circuit. Now toss in a Plasma TV (tank in the living or family room), kitchen toaster or microwave (tank near the kitchen), vacuum cleaner (that's the one that did it for me as it would trip the breaker every time before I split everything up), power drill (tank in the garage), or even a computer (tank in the den or office) running on the same circuit and it very well may have it right at the limit or may even be over it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaltISlife Posted April 8, 2011 Author Share Posted April 8, 2011 thanks Rick & impur im gonna get one of those Kill A Watt testers and see whats going on, im just wondering because i dont have any ohter outlets nearby to the tank, which is in the living room maybe i should add a second outlet on that wall. but for now im gonna check what the lill a watt says and go from there. just as long as the MH light is not losing any needed wattage im happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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